Apart from a dictionary, the most important textbook of my school years was an atlas. It was, after all, the static 2D version of a globe and every classroom had one of those. The four corners of the world were presented in different colours, denoting colonial pasts alongside our own over-weaning imperial effort.

But even the nimblest publisher, even the most attuned government information agency, let alone this post-war stamp-collecting child turning into a politically aware young adult, could not keep up with all the adjustments through those decades. Not just the loss of pink on the page but names too, and concepts, from Iron Curtain and Eastern bloc to Common Market and European Union.

All that was in the hands of human agencies. But the mapping of the shifting, tormented natural world, the shorelines ravaged by the incursions of the sea, the disruption to contour lines after seismic activity and, now, the terrifying reality of rapid climate change, needs to move faster still.

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